The latest chapter in an ongoing legislative debate about the right, or minimum, size of a South Dakota school was written today. House Bill 1171 failed to pass gubernatorial scrutiny after finding approval in both houses of the state Legislature. The bill allowed school districts with fewer than 100 students to stay open if they operated the only high school in the county. A relatively new law requires those smallest of schools to reorganize. Rounds said in his veto message that the bill’s real purpose was to protect the Herreid School District, which apparently has more than 100 students currently and won’t dip below that in the near future. The school’s current K-12 enrollment is 132 and economic development efforts are ongoing in the community.

Rounds argued that schools should be exempt from the state law if geography makes it difficult for them to reorganize with another school district not simply because a county boundary line exists. Since the law went into effect, Conde, Harrald, Polo, Carthage, South Shore, Northwestern, and Wood have all reorganized, Rounds said, and it would unfair to those districts to give a new exemption to Herreid.

Now it’s up to lawmakers to agree or disagree with the governor’s action. Read the full veto message here: http://www.state.sd.us/news

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